News - Details

Home/News/Prospect student presents app to Congress and national tech leaders

Prospect student presents app to Congress and national tech leaders

Prospect High School junior Zach Burke recently presented an app he designed to members of Congress and leaders in the tech community, including Amazon, Spotify, Microsoft and Intel.

Burke is one of nearly 100 students who traveled to Washington D.C. to demo their work on April 4 after winning the 2016 Congressional App Challenge. Burke represented the 9th Congressional District in Illinois.

As part of his iOS app development course at Prospect, Burke developed an app called OCP (Organized College Planner), which helps make the college application process easier and more organized for students.

The app, which is now on all Prospect students’ iPads, lets students keep track of their college applications, application deadlines, teacher recommendations, school website usernames and passwords, and test scores.

More than 2,100 students competed in their Congressional District’s coding competitions and submitted 650 original apps, covering a range of topics and purposes; they created apps to give guidance during medical emergencies, sign-language translators, political news, and more.

The winning app from each district has been put on display in the Capitol’s Cannon Tunnel. It can also be found on house.gov and the Congressional App Challenge website (CongressionalAppChallenge.us).